


We Won't Run

by fragilelittleteacup



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Coming Out, F/F, Fluff, Gen, just a cute lil story of self discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 08:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8837806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilelittleteacup/pseuds/fragilelittleteacup
Summary: It takes time.





	

She stood in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors in her hand.

The culture that she’d been born in held great significance with the cutting of hair, and associated the act with the banishment from family, and the severing of old alliances. Maybe that was why this felt so wrong. Maybe that was why there were tears in her eyes, an unbearable tremor building in her chest, shuddering out with every trembling breath.

She was a strong woman. She always had been. Now, she knew that was because she’d never questioned herself, and had always relied on the stability of knowing herself more deeply than anyone else could.

Now, she was tearing apart her solid foundations, and disintegrating the person she’d come to know herself to be, after forty years of life. Ripping the ground from under her feet. Severing ties with the deepest parts of herself.

She lifted the scissors, grabbed a handful of her hair.

And she started cutting.

 

***

 

She drove to another city and got her shabby hair professionally cut, and she felt somewhat better afterwards. She looked into the mirror and saw a more complete person, a fulfilled woman, and her heart beat harder with the knowledge that she was closer to becoming who she knew she was.

“Thank you,” she said to the hairdresser, “that looks much better.”

 

***

 

Sherlock noticed, because that was who he was. She’d been prepared for it. Ready for the siege of deductions, of analyses, of anxious proclamations of friendship and worried questions.

What she hadn’t been prepared for was for Sherlock to look at her and smile, with a softness that he very rarely allowed himself to show.

“Very good, Watson,” he said, and she knew, then, that he’d seen through her entirely. He’d watched her grow, watched the feelings build behind her masks. He’d known, the whole time, and he had said nothing. He’d allowed her to come to this conclusion on her own, allowed her the privacy and dignity of her own journey.

She lurched forward and hugged him. He hugged her back, and did not pull away. She felt his lips meet her forehead in a tender kiss. The kiss of a brother. The kiss of a friend.

“You will always have me, Watson. Remember that.”

 

***

 

Joan Watson started wearing suit shirts. Jeans. Boots. A tight bra, and then a binder. Chapstick, instead of lipstick. Her hair was cut in a boyish way, and she looked simultaneously younger and more masculine. She looked into the mirror and felt the world falling into place, felt her soul reconstructing, felt the sense that something was _missing_ finally start to disappear.

She’d always felt that she was born to be in a state of wanting, born to be in a position of observation and control. High heels. Tight dresses. Clever words. Chin held high, rebelling against a silent, unnoticed, denied truth. Men that fell at her feet, and women she knew she could not have.

Late into her adulthood, she was finally letting go.

 

***

 

She met Louise online. Tinder, of all places.

And everything was suddenly perfect.

 

 

 

 


End file.
